Donald Trump’s farm-country stronghold is struggling due to an economic crisis that farmers say he is making worse.
Trump won 69 percent of rural voters in 2024, according to Pew, while farming-dependent counties in the Corn Belt backed him by an average of 78 percent, according to Investigate Midwest.
Now, those same communities are grappling with soaring costs and unprecedented uncertainty.
Farmers who overwhelmingly backed him in 2024 say his trade war and Iran conflict have sent costs soaring, piled on uncertainty and pushed the agricultural sector into its worst financial downturn in decades.
The Iran conflict has seen energy prices surge. Gasoline has climbed from around $3 a gallon before the war to more than $4, putting fresh pressure on household finances and undercutting Trump’s promise to bring down everyday expenses.
Amid the uncertainty, polls show voters are increasingly experiencing financial strain, with many cutting back on household spending to make ends meet.
Farmers are feeling the squeeze particularly hard. Higher fuel costs are making it more expensive to run tractors and other machinery, while fertilizer prices have also surged.
“Inputs are way out of whack,” Matt Bailey, a Nebraska farmer who grows corn and soybeans, told the Financial Times. A phosphorus fertilizer he uses that cost about $470 a ton a decade ago now sells for more than $900. “Where do you start with that? How do you budget for that?”
The squeeze extends across nearly every part of farming. Interest payments, labor and machinery have all become more expensive, Brad Lubben, an agricultural economist at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, told the Financial Times.
“If you look at all the components of the production budget, most of them have gone up substantially over the past few years,” Lubben said.
Pam Johnson, a northern Iowa farmer and former president of the National Corn Growers Association, said the Iran conflict has only added to the uncertainty.
“The [Iran] war has made so much uncertainty for us as farmers,” Johnson said. “It’s projected that farmers aren’t going to make any money for the next two years.”
John Dittrich, a Nebraska farmer with 44 years of experience, said the risks facing producers are unlike anything he has seen.
“Our costs of production are very high and then the instability and the unknowns of every variable that affects both our production and the prices we receive for our commodities are just unprecedented,” he said.
Trump’s trade policies have compounded the pain. His tariffs have contributed to an almost $15 billion decline in U.S. agricultural exports to China.
“This is the worst financial downturn in the sector since the 1980s,” said John Hansen, president of Nebraska Farmers Union.
Meanwhile, Iowa farmer Aaron Lehman told the Times of London: “The trade and the war stuff … it’s extremely chaotic. No one knows what’s going on. And we are right at the front end of the damage.”
The White House did not respond to the request for comment.
The economic strain is becoming an increasingly uncomfortable political problem for Republicans ahead of the midterms, when the party will depend heavily on rural voters to defend its congressional majorities.
Polls have already shown that Trump’s once-solid standing in rural America has deteriorated sharply.
Fox News polling put his approval among rural voters at 70 percent when he began his second term in January 2025. By June, that figure had fallen to 51 percent, before sliding again to just 44 percent last month.
Republican Sen. Thom Tillis acknowledged the challenge Monday.
“We’ve got 71 days [until the midterm elections] and right now we don’t have a positive message to sell farm country, and we haven’t since ‘liberation day’ last year,” Tillis said.
